For Wilshire Baptist Church
As this is being posted, we’re in San Antonio for the wedding vow renewal of my brother and his wife on their 25th anniversary. We are there because we are family, of course, but also because in a momentary lapse of judgement, they asked me to “officiate.” When I expressed my doubts, my brother reasoned that they were already married so there was no way I could mess that up and say something that would unmarry them. So it shall be.
The renewal ceremony is timed within a few days of their actual anniversary on January 1. I’m thinking the start of a new year is the perfect time for such a thing. Popular culture and tradition has us using the changing of the calendar to clear the decks and make new starts. We make resolutions: to begin new, healthier habits and quit old ones that are harming us; to finally do something we’ve been putting off; or to change our focus and priorities for the better. However, there’s something to be said for recommitting to something that is wonderful and worthwhile and has stood the test of time. It might be a marriage, it might be a way of life. It might be a business plan, it might be a church mission statement. It might be a tradition or practice that has been beneficial to ourselves and others.
Even so, what we renew or recommit to most likely will not be the exact same thing we originally committed to. Time has a way of bending and changing and redirecting us, so that while our original motives and intentions are there, the way they are manifested may look and feel different.
English poet and pastor Malcolm Guite, who has visited us at Wilshire, has something to say about this type of renewal in his sonnet, “A Renewal of Vows,” that he wrote one year for his own marriage vow renewal:
So, open up the treasure-casket, love,
the treasure is still there, the hidden things
that love contains. Old words, like wedding rings,
surround their mysteries, they live and move
as breath renews them, burnished as the gold
around our fingers, glowing as we make
the vows that make us new again: I take,
protect, and comfort, cherish, have and hold.
The same old words, that cannot stay the same,
for they have grown, as we have, more than old.
They change and deepen like all things that live,
they compass more and still have more to give:
All that I have is yours, all that I am
I give again, with all I will become.
There is so much in that poem to consider, but I find comfort in Guite’s closing line: “All that I have is yours, all that I am I give again, with all I will become.” There’s some breathing room there; some allowance that we don’t have to remain static and unchanging. We can grow, stretch, yearn and explore while still being committed to the core principle of the vow: giving all that we have.
So, perhaps this year we should add some renewals to our resolutions.